Reprinted with permission of the Salem Evening
News
Salem Evening News, 9 March 1999.
Pet Cause: despite loss of hearing, woman turns love of animals into a career
By Peter DeMarco
Danielle Rastetter, a veterinarian at the Danvers Animal Hospital, holds Isaac outside of her office.
Name: Danielle Rastetter
Age: 26
Education: Graduated last June as doctor of veterinary medicine
Favorite food: Buffalo wings
Favorite Place on the North Shore: The boardwalk at Lynn Beach. Great for in-line skating.
Veterinarian Danielle Rastetter has two weaknesses.
First she's a sucker for puppy kisses. Second she is nearly deaf.
Rastetter, Danvers Animal Hospital's newest vet, has profound hearing loss in one ear and severe loss in the other. Without a hearing aid she hears nothing. Even with one, she must read lips.
Dr. George Myers, who runs the hospital, learned that last September when Rastetter first joined him in the operating room.
"I put on my surgical mask, and she looked at me and said, 'I can't understand a word you're saying.''
But make no mistake: Rastetter's hearing loss is not a handicap.
She provides the same tender care any other doctor does, albeit with a little extra effort.
When she examines a dog, Rastetter will put her hand on the animal's throat to feel if he growls, since she can't tell otherwise.
Her stethoscope is designed for the hearing impaired, though she's not afraid to ask another doctor to double-check a patient's heartbeat.
As for the surgical mask problem, sometimes a staff member will stand outside the operating room and repeat Dr. Myer's instructions so that Rastetter can read that person's lips.
"When my clients come in, I greet them and shake their hand and I always say, 'I'm hard of hearing. You have to look at me when you talk,'" Rastetter explained.
"Some people are a little surprised. I think it's a lot different now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I think people realize I'm a veterinarian. Obviously, I wouldn't be here at Danvers Animal Hospital, which is a good, quality hospital, if I couldn't do the job."
Myers, who hired the 26-year-old doctor after she graduated from Ohio State Veterinary School, agreed.
"Anyone with an impairment like that has to have a great deal of dedication," he said "(Before I met her) I had some reservations. We're so accustomed now, it's a non-issue."
So without a hearing aid, you hear nothing?
Unless you scream in my ear (laughs). My mother has done that to wake me up.
Were you like this from birth?
It did not show up until I was about 3, which makes me a person with a post-lingual hearing loss. That's why I speak as well as I do. Other people with my level of hearing loss have a lot of difficulty. I was able to hear for a couple of years. So it's congenital but it's not hereditary. Nobody else in my family wears a hearing aid.
You learned to read lips at a young age, then.
Some people with hearing loss tell me they have to take classes. I guess I just picked up on it. I was lucky. The other thing that was coincidental was that my mother, when she went to college, got her masters in speech therapy. Then she had a daughter with a hearing loss.
And my boyfriend's father is an otologist - a doctor for the ear. And he has a son with a hearing loss.
How do you hear when you can't read lips?
Most every TV manufactured after 1993 has closed-caption for the hearing impaired. That's great. I have a hearing dog named Ren. He alerts me to the sounds I miss sometimes. He wakes me up in the morning with my alarm clock, if someone is at the door, or the phone or the fire alarm.
So Ren won't wake you up unless your alarm clock goes off?
Or unless he has to go the bathroom really bad.
Why did you choose veterinary medicine?
It's more of a decision that happened over time. It wasn't any one thing. Intellectually I love biology. I'm fascinated with that. … My father bred dachshunds when I was younger, so I'd be there helping with the birthing and raising puppies ever since I was 8 years old. I won two goldfish. Well, two goldfish led all the way up to a 100-gallon saltwater aquarium. My dream is that I would work with marine mammals.
Do people take good enough care of their pets?
I think people want to, so long as they get the information. The biggest limiting factor is money. Today pets are more being looked at as children. Especially if you have someone like myself, who is single, or a married couple who gets a pet and can't have children for a while because they are trying to meet financial goals. It becomes their child.
What are some of the things people miss?
Animals need dental care. If you think about it, they eat the same things we do, but they don't brush. You can imagine what your mouth would feel like if you didn't brush your teeth, ever.
The other biggest one is spaying and neutering. A lot of people think, "OK, I'll let them go ahead and have a little [sic]." I have to tell them that every heat an animal has increases their chances of having mammary or uterine cancer by eight times in later life.
Men do tend to think that if they neuter their dog, it's taking something away from them or they're not a male dog anymore, so we run into that.
Men take it personally?
Yeah, I have to tell people that the animal is meant to be a pet, and the animal will be the best pet if it's neutered.
What about this business of giving pets Prozac or drugs to make them feel better when mom or dad leaves the house.
Psychological drugs have a role in veterinary medicine. … The goal is to have them start on medication, start behavior modification, and when the behavior modification starts to be accepted, start weaning them of [sic] the drugs.
We have dogs that tear up the house, defecate all over. Using the drugs can be part of the behavior correction program.
What else do you do outside the office?
I try to work out at Bally's in Revere and in Peabody.
I'm also involved in two major things that are hearing-related. I own an electronic mailing list (called) the Network for Overcoming Increased Silence Effectively (NOISE). It's for hard-of-hearing medical professionals worldwide, so people who have questions … can get ideas and suggestions.
I'm also president of a nonprofit organization, the Association of Professionals with Hearing Losses. We lobby for see-through masks that would allow for lip-reading. We're working with a company to create that.
You don't seem like a person who is bothered by the fact that you can't hear much.
My attitude is everybody has a disability. Whether it is an emotional disability or psychological one or one that is more physical. We all have to deal with things; mine just happens to be a hearing loss.
I was raised in a family that was supportive and taught me to be assertive about it. I always have been. In the middle of lectures I would always be raising my hand, saying you have to speak louder, look at me when you talk. I'm not ashamed about it.
Like any disability, there are times when you wish you didn't have it … But I think that if I didn't have the hearing loss, I wouldn't be who I am today. And I'm very happy with who I am today.